One More Spring
by William Easley
Summary: As Dipper and Mabel count down the weeks of their last term in high school, they feel both elated and anxious. The future is the biggest mystery of them all. Set from January to May of 2017.
1. Chapter 1

I do not own the show GRAVITY FALLS or any of the characters; both are the property of the Walt Disney Company and of Alex Hirsch. I make no money from these stories but write just for fun and in the hope that other fans enjoy reading them. I will ask, please, do not copy my stories elsewhere on the Internet. I work hard on these, and they mean a lot to me. Thank you.

* * *

**One More Spring**

**(January-May 2017)**

* * *

_To Dipper and Mabel Pines, beginning a new year was like opening a door to one of those rooms Soos was always discovering in the Mystery Shack. They never knew what lay beyond the door. However, that never once stopped them from opening it. Admittedly, this New Year's Day door was different from all the others. It was marked 18?_

_Not literally. But that's what it felt like. This year they would be eighteen. And then . . . ?_

* * *

**1: Love Matters**

Dipper and Mabel got back from their Christmas trip to Gravity Falls on January 1. By the time they'd hauled their dirty laundry, guitar cases, sewing and crafting supplies, luggage, and themselves into the house in Piedmont, they were already missing their friends.

Well, in the cases of Wendy and Teek, more than just friends. But, you know, the twins soon got busy enough to dull the edge of missing them because of school. It was their last term of Senior Year, the big run-up to Prom and State Track Meet and Graduation and then one summer in Gravity falls and—college and all that.

In other words, they both had plenty of distractions from love-longings. That term, Dipper had two extra-hard classes. Mabel, for once outsmarting her brobro, had the easiest schedule she'd enjoyed since Freshman Year, three art classes, for one thing, which she was going to ace and which she could almost teach. The other two courses weren't easy A's, but they were interesting enough for her to keep up the work necessary at her own relaxed pace. As Mabel said, easy schedules result from crafty planning.

Then on a Saturday in late January, she received her official acceptance packet from the Olmsted College of the Arts, up north, a scant three miles from Western Alliance University, where both Dipper and Wendy had already been accepted. She'd received the actual letter before Christmas, but now she unpacked the campus map and the activities calendar and the catalog and the bulletin and so on and so forth.

She fretted about the dorm situation—the packet informed her that owing to unusually crowded conditions, she might have not one, but three roommates. They were putting an extra bunk-bed in each room of the freshman dorm.

"_Three_ roomies! I can't stand it!" Mabel lamented.

"What's wrong with that?" Dipper asked her. "You're gregarious."

"No, I eat both meat and vegetables," Mabel said. "What does diet have to do with it? Anyhow, yeah, ordinarily I'm the life of the party, and if there isn't a party, I start one. But I know me, and that kind of free-range behavior could get me into trouble real quick. Think of it—four in a room would be like a sleepover, seven nights out of the week!" She brooded over the dorm photos in the color brochure. Dipper had to admit that even with two girls in the dorm room, it looked crowded. "I'm too, what did you say, gregarious for my own good!"

"Good point," Dipper agreed. "Maybe you should learn some control. Seems to me that a key to keeping your sanity's self-control."

Mabel sounded upset: "I don't_ want_ to be one of Santa's selves! I want to be a dentist!"

Dipper, who had been half-paying attention while also studying a chapter in his Calculus II textbook, glanced up at her. "Huh?"

Mabel just shrugged. "Sorry, little hangover from Christmas. Oh, I don't know. The student handbook says I can live off-campus if I'm twenty-one, or even younger if I have a relative to live with, and if I have my own transportation, and I've got Helen Wheels. Hey, maybe I could live with you and Wendy?"

Dipper laughed, nearly snorting. "We're applying for an apartment in Married Housing! Want to see that floor plan?" He put his textbook aside and went to his file cabinet—yes, he had actually asked for and received a filing cabinet as one of his Christmas gifts—and found the sheet. "Here you go. Take a look and tell me where you plan to sleep."

"Waugh," Mabel said, spreading the plan on the table she used for sewing. "Is this _it_? A bedroom, a little study area, and a bathroom? And it's all open except for the bathroom! This is inhumane! How many square feet is this, anyway?"

"Let's see. It's fourteen feet wide and twelve feet deep. The bathroom there is four feet wide by eight deep, and that's a little closet behind it, six feet deep by two feet wide. Work that out."

"A hundred and twenty-four feet?" Mabel asked. "Not even a tub in the bathroom, just a little tiny shower stall. You guys will get, like, cabin fever! You'll kill each other! Or else you'll never get out of bed and you'll both flunk out! That's ridiculous! Our craft room here's at _least_ that big!"

She had a point. They were sitting in Dipper's guitar-practice room and Mabel's sewing room, and it undoubtedly was somewhat larger than 124 square feet. However, Dipper said, "It is what it is. And it's not cheap. That little apartment is thirty-six hundred dollars a semester."

Mabel frantically studied the floor sketch. "Wait, where's the kitchen? The dining room?"

Dipper reached for his calculus textbook again. "It doesn't have them. There's a communal kitchen for each six units."

"One kitchen and six couples? Impossible! That means you can't ever cook!"

"We can, but—"

"No fridge! No midnight snacks! Why don't they just send you to prison?"

"Well," Dipper said, "we _could_ live off-campus—like Olmsted, at W.A.U. it's a rule that freshmen have to stay in the freshman dorm for at least their first semester, but that's waived for married students. Wendy and I aren't thinking of doing that because it would be a heck of a lot more expensive. Rents run high around there. I checked, and even a tiny little cottage with just one bedroom and one bath ran three thousand dollars a month."

"What do I have to pay for my cell?" Mabel asked. She sorted through the information from Olmsted until she found it. "Oh, I can't believe this! Says here that to pay for my part of a four-girl room, it's nearly $6500 for the year. That's robbery!"

"Expensive, like I said. I think we may burn through half our savings by going to college," Dipper said. "Of course, I'm supposed to have some more TV money coming in this year, but still—face it, Sis, college costs a lot."

Mabel pretended to faint and lay stretched out on the floor. She stared up at Dipper, who sat on the floor leaning against the wall. "Wait, you have scholarships, though! Two of them!"

"Which pay for my tuition and books," Dipper said. "That helps a lot, but things like housing and food are extra. Wendy was smart to get her freshman year taken care of by going part-time to a community college. Lots cheaper."

"But that's too late for me! Wait, how big's _my_ room gonna be?" Mabel asked.

The materials she'd received didn't specify, but online they visited the school's website and discovered that Audubon Dorm—the designated freshman dormitory at Olmsted—featured very basic rooms: Two smallish closets, a shared bathroom with gang showers down the hall, bunk beds and two desks, and, Dipper calculated from photos, only about 110 square feet of actual living space.

"For _four_ of us?" Mabel wailed. "That's only 27 and a half feet for each of us!"

"You'll just have to make an effort to get along with your roomies," Dipper said.

"What if I can't _stand_ them? What if they don't like _me_?"

"Maybe you can get to know who they are before college starts," Dipper suggested. "You could mail them or email them and like that. That could help you adjust."

Mabel wasn't at all sure about that, but she didn't know what else to say.

* * *

About a week later, Mabel finally got up the nerve to have the Talk with Billy Sheaffer. _I like you a lot as a friend, Billy, but, well, I'm just too old for you. You'll find somebody your own age. Hey, don't be hurt. I'm not saying I won't be your friend anymore! I'm gonna be here for you, and things aren't going to change . . . . _

Mabel had eavesdropped that time after she, Dipper, Soos, and Wendy had explored Ford's bunker, and she remembered how Wendy had handled a similar situation. This was the same tune, just different lyrics. Same-y but different-y, too.

And if it was hard on the eleven-year-old boy, it was difficult for her, no use to lie about that. Still, as she put a little distance between her and Billy, feeling-wise, she tried to be empathetic and understanding and all that cool stuff, and she offered him lots of reassurance. In a way, Billy was even more insecure than her brother, and that meant he might even have set a world record.

As Mabel talked, Billy grew upset—she could read that on his face and see it in the tears spilling from his good eye—but she got through the spiel and then went out of her way to be extra-nice to him over the following week, and he started to seem glumly resigned to not eventually marrying Mabel.

In fact, he finally admitted to her that, at eleven, he wasn't really sure about this whole proposition of falling in love. A crush is one thing; love is very different and much more difficult, especially for someone who embodied the spirit of a dream demon who had never once felt love.

Every time they saw each other, Mabel talked to him about it. "Love is when somebody means so much to you that you'd do anything to help them or protect them. If they want to go on a long trip far away without you, you let them, even if it makes you lonely. That's because you like them more than you like yourself, even," she said as they sat on the floor in his living room playing checkers on a board spread out on the coffee table.

"I don't always even like myself," Billy admitted. "I get mad and want to hurt people. The ones who make fun of me and push me around at school. Then I think of how they all must see me, just this useless little damaged kid. No wonder girls get creeped out by me. Sometimes I think I can't do anything right."

"What are you talking about?" Mabel asked, smiling. "Right now you're beating me so bad at checkers—look, I'm down to three guys, and not one of them crowned!—not even Grunkle Stan can beat me like that."

"This is just a game," Billy said.

"So's romance, Billy! Hey, I can teach you the rules. See, when boys get interested in girls, ninety-nine per cent of them are too dumb to know what girls like in a guy or how to act around a girl, even. Let me give you the valuable inside information, and you'll go into the game with all your checkers already crowned! Um, that's like a metaphor."

Billy actually chuckled a little. "I didn't think checkers was a way to make girls like me."

"Ah-hah! First rule of the game: You can't _make _a girl like you, Billy. If you try, she'll _know_ you're trying, and at worst you'll scare her off and at best she'll feel pity for you. Trust me, you don't want that. Pity is the acid that dissolves the honey of love!"

"O . . . kay," Billy said slowly.

Mabel waved her arms. "All right, all right, forget the metaphors. Let me see how I can put it simply. Um, you can never_ make_ someone love you. But you can make _yourself _someone who deserves to be loved."

"I don't know how to do that," Billy said, his shoulders slumping.

"That's why I'm gonna be your coach of love!" Mabel told him. "Hey, I'm the second-best matchmaker alive! The guy in first place, believe me, you don't want to mess with him, he's overweight and sings too loud and tends to foul things up, but I'll give him this: he can match-make like nobody's business! OK, so I'm on your side, let's start. Who are some girls in your class? Ones you'd like to just be friends with?"

"Um, well—" Billy cooked his finger at his lips and frowned in thought, and Mabel got a little shiver. That pose reminded her a little bit too much for comfort of Bill Cipher planning world domination. "There's Penny Abrensen. She's nice, but—you know, well, she never notices me."

"What's Penny like?"

"Oh, she's always laughing. And she can make other people laugh. I mean, she makes silly faces and does goofy things." Bill smiled. "She's pretty, too, and she dresses in these real bright colors, and she doesn't care if nobody else does."

Nodding her approval, Mabel said, "I'd say she's a winner. Penny, she's number one on our list of possibles. Who's another girl you wouldn't mind being friends with? We should look at about three more."

"It's kind of hard for me to be friends with _anybody_," Billy mumbled. "I always know that I'm different. And they know."

"Different, the same, what's the diff?" Mabel asked. When Billy looked as if he didn't quite get that, Mabel said, "Look, opposites attract, OK? You don't gotta be the _same _as the girl you like. You just have to let her be who she is. And _appreciate _that. And let her be herself. And you be yourself, too, but find things you can share and agree on. That's the best way, Billy. So—who's another girl?"

"China Hartbrough," he said. "People make fun of her name, and that makes her mad, but—well, she's quiet and always looks a little bit sad for some reason. She's kinda nerdy, I guess. Wears glasses, and she's real smart, always makes A's. She, uh, doesn't have many friends. She seems kind of lonely. But I wouldn't know how to start."

"Easy. Start by sitting near her at lunch, or out on the playground, or somewhere. Just say 'Hi,' and then say something nice about her."

"Like what?" Billy asked.

"Um, her name, for instance. First thing," Mabel said. "You talk about your own name. Say, oh, 'William's such an ordinary name.' And then tell her, 'But you've got a real interesting name, China. I really like your name.' Then she'll say something."

"What?" Billy asked.

"What am I, a mind-reader?" Mabel kidded him. "Really I don't know, but she'll say _something_. She may say, 'I hate my name!' Or maybe she'll tell you how she got it. Or she might say she thinks Billy is a nice name, whatever. It doesn't matter! Once she starts talking to you, listen to her. I mean, _really_ listen. Look at you right now, you're staring down at the checkerboard. When a girl talks to you, look at her_ face_! Watch her lips, watch her expression. Practice by looking at me. That's better! And take what she's saying in. Pay attention. Then you say something back—if she says, 'I hate my name!' you say, 'It's because people tease you, isn't it? But that doesn't matter. Your name is part of you, and I like it because I like you.' Don't turn red! This is just your first checker move in the romance game!"

They came up with two other girls as possibles, but in the end, Billy thought he might start with China, because she looked like she needed a friend. Mabel approved. All in all, on that January day, Mabel gave young Billy Sheaffer quite a few things to think about. And he made up his mind that he would try some of her suggestions out, yes, he would! Some day. Soon. Probably.

* * *

Piedmont High's track and field season started in early February. Dipper looked at the team he captained with considerable pride. They'd trained hard and shaped up, and when they won their first meet handily, he congratulated them all.

"Great going, guys and girls!" he said, standing up front after they'd boarded the bus. "If you weren't keeping score, we took firsts in both the girls' and boy's 4 by 800 relays—Lara, Mary Dean, Jen, Madison, Mark, Xavier, Bailey, Donald, congratulations to you all! And Marcie took a first in the 100-meter hurdles, and Jimmy got a second in the boy's hurdles. Trina got a second in the hundred-meter dash, and Xavier got a first in the 1600 meter—"

"Hey, Cap!" Gene Wyler said. "Don't short-change yourself! You got a first in the 200-meter dash!"

"Well, yeah," Dipper said with a grin. A Grunkle Stan response came to him: "I was gonna get to it eventually, just building up to mentioning the most important victory!" He got a good laugh from them and went on, singling out everyone who'd won or placed and telling them it was great that out of twenty-four events, they had seven first places, eight second places, and nine thirds. "So we got medals in every event," he finished. "More than any of the other schools. A couple of you had bad luck, but you all put in the effort. All I'm going to ask is—keep doing what you're doing!"

Coach Dinson, sitting behind the driver, called out, "And let's cheer our team captain, guys! Big one for Dipper Pines!"

As the kids shouted and clapped, Dipper felt pleased, but not as pleased as he was that evening, when he face-timed Wendy with the sports report. "I always wanted to be engaged to a jock!" she teased him. "Seriously, man, I'm real proud of you. Wish I could give you a big kiss right now to show you how much."

"Oh, I wish too, Wendy. I wish you could. So much."

"Yeah, this long-distance thing gets old fast," she agreed. "But close or far, I love you, Big Dipper."

"Love you right back, Magic Girl."

All in all, little glitches and small setbacks and worries about the future aside, it seemed to Dipper and Mabel as though things were going good.

If only they would keep going that way.


	2. Chapter 2

**One More Spring**

**(February 2017)**

* * *

**2: Zoo Trip and Sunset**

Mabel was antsy. She wanted to do something. She didn't know what, but something. Maybe, she said, a road trip.

Alex and Wanda had already allowed Dipper and Mabel to drive all the way up to Oregon and back, so they couldn't very well forbid them to take a day trip into San Francisco.

As McGucket would have said, it looked mathematically feasible that weekend in February. Dipper had caught up with his homework the previous night, and as of the previous day, his second track meet was behind him. He took another first for the two-hundred-meter dash, though overall the team didn't quite measure up to that great first trial of the season, but they had tried hard and added respectably to their wins column.

However, Mabel was feeling a little blue, and after breakfast on Sunday, she had come to his room, where he lay on his unmade bed,writing in his latest Journal and, hanging on the door frame as if she were in danger of sudden collapse, Mabel proclaimed, "You know what would cheer me up, Broseph? A trip to the zoo!"

"The Oakland Zoo?" he asked.

"No. I want to get out and away from the house. San Francisco Zoo. When was the last time we went there? Like . . . five years ago? Please go with me."

He glanced at her, the urge to say something sarcastic fading as soon as he saw that she really was feeling somewhat low. She wasn't grief-stricken, not like the time they first came home from Gravity Falls and there for some minutes she thought she'd have to leave Waddles behind, but just . . . sad, at least for Mabel. He bit back his sarcasm and instead mildly said, "Sure thing." He raised his voice: "O All-Knowing Oracle, what will the weather in San Francisco be today?"

"You could just caller Electra, like everybody else in the family," Mabel pointed out.

"Shh."

The Amazone Ditto, a smart speaker that connected to the Net, replied in her cheerful, somewhat sassy tone: "Currently in San Francisco it's 50 degrees Fahrenheit with a light rain shower trailing off to the west. Today you can expect partly sunny weather with a high of 56 degrees and a low of 38 degrees. Will that be all, O my master?"

"Thanks, All-Knowing Oracle," Dipper said.

"Sometimes I wonder about you, Brobro," Mabel said.

"Sometimes I wonder about both of us," he said. "Not too chilly out today, but it'll be windy close to the beach. Better dress warm."

They both put on medium-heavy jackets, told their mom and dad where they were heading ("Drive carefully and call us when you get there," Mom said. Dad said, "Take money. Not mine, but take some.")

They set out in mid-morning, Mabel driving. As the Ditto predicted, the sky was a rain-washed blue in the increasing breaks between the low clouds. Getting from Piedmont to the San Francisco Zoo, which was beside the Pacific south of the Golden Gate, was a bit of a chore.

They crossed the long Bay Bridge (really two bridges and a tunnel, but nobody called it anything other than the Bay Bridge). Mabel said as they headed east over the water, invisible beneath a pearly surface-hugging fog, "I guess it's safer now, but I kinda liked the old suspension part they tore down last year."

"Change happens," Dipper said. "And I think it's better to drive on something that's not likely to fall to pieces."

"Yeah, you go ahead. Be practical," Mabel said. "I'll be nostalgic for both of us." Once across the bridge, she took I-80 in fairly heavy traffic, then the 101, which was more congested, and then 280 until exiting on first John Daly Boulevard and then turning north on Skyline Boulevard.

They arrived at the zoo, parked, made the duty call to Mom, and then bought their tickets, wandering in near the Primate Discovery Center. The pavement still showed patches of damp from the morning shower, but the sun broke through right about then and the patches dwindled fast.

It was a breezy, cool day, and Mabel had bundled up in her pink insulated coat, Dipper in his blue quilted one. They paused, just remembering. Zoo visits had somehow become a thing of the past for them.

Not many people had come to the zoo that day—maybe the morning was a bit too cool for most parents and young kids—and Mabel took Dipper's hand. She looked over to the left. "Remember that?" she asked, her voice low and tinged with memory.

"Oh, yeah. Of course I do!" Dipper said. Mabel had to keep pushing her hair away from her face—it was that gusty—and he was glad he was wearing Wendy's trapper's hat. Oh, people sometimes stared at him, probably wondering what kind of fashion statement this lanky teen was making, but, dang it, it kept his head warm!

Because he knew what Mabel was looking at, he walked with her over to the Fisher Family Children's Zoo. Dipper remembered the entrance arch with its red banner and its black-and-white pony and goat. "Think it's OK for a couple of teens to go inside there?" she asked.

"Long as you don't Scotch-tape a traffic cone to a pony's head," Dipper told her. "Yeah. Nobody's gonna mind. Let's go into the children's zoo."

Mabel paused at the decorative WELCOME sign, low enough to be kid height. "Take my picture?" she asked.

"Sure, Sis." Dipper took out his phone and Mabel posed beside the sign, her hand resting on the cut-out shape of a pink pig. With her other hand she tried to control her wind-waved hair. Dipper took about a dozen shots and was sure he had at least a couple of good ones, without her hair in front of her face. "There," he said. "Got you in all your glory."

Mabel patted the sign. "Reminds me a lot of Waddles," she said quietly.

"Ah-ha. I deduce that you're missing Gravity Falls. Am I correct?" he asked as they walked into the children's area. Very few kids about, he noticed.

Mabel hunched up her shoulders. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe I'm just missing being, you know, a kid."

"Good times, good times," Dipper murmured, though for him remembering meant recalling wedgies and catcalls and other kids making fun of him. That one Valentine's day. The time three third-grade girls got up and moved when he sat at their lunch table. Stuff like that.

As they strolled, Mabel put her hands in her pockets. "That time when you and Grunkle Ford went to the buried UFO or whatever, when our thirteenth birthday was coming up, and Soos drove me to the Gravity Falls High gym to see if we could rent it for the party—well, Wendy was waiting on line for high-school registration. She kinda popped my bubble that day. She wasn't being mean, just warning me that high school could be rough. I remember her saying, 'I would give anything to be twelve again.' Now I know what she meant. Dipper, are we too young for nostalgia?"

"I don't know. Grunkle Stan says that nostalgia today isn't as good as the nostalgia he used to get."

"Ha. I don't know what's wrong. I'm jumpy and sort of unhappy but not really, and I get down in the dumps for no reason at all. Maybe I'm sensing some kind of trouble ahead. Maybe my piggy senses are tingling."

"Spider-pig, spider-pig," Dipper chanted. When Mabel didn't smile, or even swat him, he said in a comforting tone, "I think I know what trouble you're afraid of. It's called change. It' that we're about to graduate and then in the fall move away from home. I get the same jitters, Sis. It's not really trouble, exactly, it's just that we know things will change forever. But no matter what, we'll always have each other."

She linked her arm through his. "Thanks, Dip. Hey, let's go see if the meerkats are still here."

They and their American cousins the prairie dogs were still there, though that morning they remained inside, probably preferring that to the cool outside air, and the two could only see them through glass. "They're so cute," Mabel said. "But, you know, this place isn't as much fun as it was years ago."

That was sort of true. Now, halfway through their seventeenth year, Dipper and Mabel were too old to sift through the sandbox for meerkat snacks, too big to creep through the oversized plaster tunnels to give them a feel for the meerkat way of life, though Dipper said, "If you want to see if you can squeeze through, I'll cover for you."

"Don't think I'd make it. One day, though," Mabel said, "I'm gonna have kids, and I'm gonna bring 'em here, and I'll use 'em as an excuse to do everything I loved to do!"

"Good idea. Hey, if Wendy and I have our twins first, you can borrow them for the day," Dipper said.

"Yeah, right. I was kidding you when I mentioned the twins."

"Well, Wendy did have kind of a vision that we're fated to have twins," Dipper said. "And twins do run in our family!"

Mabel playfully punched her brother's arm. "If it happens, good luck with that! They'd probably drive you crazy."

"Nah," he said. "I got used to you over the years. Couldn't be worse than that! Hey, it's past twelve-thirty. Getting hungry?"

Mabel linked her arm with his again. "You read my tummy."

They stopped for lunch at the Leaping Lemur Café, where for old times' sake they got cheeseburgers and shared a basket of garlic fries. "Don't really like these all that much," Dipper said, munching on a pungent fry, "but if I have to ride back with you in the car with the windows rolled up, I have to eat them in self-defense."

Mabel was in a reminiscent mood. "I remember you always used to take the tomato off your burger," she said. "You don't do that now. When did you start eating tomatoes?"

He thought about it. "I don't really remember. Somehow I learned to like them somewhere along the way, though. Tastes change, like everything else."

"Wish they had Pitt's, here," Mabel said as she sipped her cola.

"Can't get it outside of Oregon, though," Dipper said. "Hey, maybe when we go off to college we can take a couple of cases with us."

Mabel laughed. "Ow! Almost squirted soda through my nose. Couple of cases? Like there'd be anywhere to keep them in those teeny little dorm rooms!"

"Yeah, and neither of us would have a private fridge. Probably a bad idea. Oh, well, on weekends we can hop in the car and drive up to Oregon. It's only about a half-hour drive from Western Alliance up to the Oregon border."

Mabel chuckled and stole some fries from his side of the basket. "What a great idea. The weekly Pitt's run! I can see us doing that. Hey, I get Helen Wheels, right? You and Wendy have the Green Machine."

"OK by me," Dipper said. "But we'll all pile into one car and charge up to Oregon, singing dopey songs along the way."

Mabel sighed. "Sounds sweet. Only—college classes and clubs and all that—I bet we won't have enough time for silly stuff like that."

"Don't talk that way," Dipper said. "There's always time for silly stuff."

"At least we'll see each other a lot, won't we?" Mabel asked softly.

"Every single day if you want," Dipper said. "We could make a habit of always meeting to have dinner together somewhere. Or even breakfast."

"Yeah, I'd like that." Mabel took a long breath. "Dipper, I'm so worried. I've never been on my own before, you know?"

"Neither of us has. Anyway, you won't be totally on your own up there, either," Dipper said. "We'll be close to you, and you wait. You'll make loads of friends at art college. And I know they'll love you."

"And Teek will be all the way across the country," Mabel sighed. "We're gonna make our best try a long-distance relationship, but—Dipper, heck, I'm not just worried. I'm scared."

"I think you know you can trust Teek."

Mabel looked as if she were on the verge of tears. "Yeah, but I don't know if I can trust _me_," she confessed. "Good old goofy old Mabel, go with the impulse, anything for a good time, you know. What if I'm not good enough for _him_?"

"You are. Sis, whatever happens, I always got your back."

She patted his hand. "Thanks."

They spent a long, leisurely afternoon at the zoo, then at closing time moved the car to a beach parking lot and strolled on Ocean Beach for more than an hour, almost the only people there. Far off to the south, the glimpsed the silhouettes of some hang-gliding enthusiasts, but here only a few beach-walkers shared the solitude.

The Pacific lived up to its name, for a change, and the water remained at nearly flat calm. No surfers. They looked for snowy plovers—a sign at the beach approach warned that they were a protected species and though you could watch them, you couldn't disturb them.

They weren't sure if they saw any. Some small wading birds darted about the wet sand down near the water, but they were wary and scuttled away if they so much as walked two steps toward them.

"Maybe that's them," Dipper said. "Next time we'll bring binoculars."

"What a disappointment," Mabel said. "I really wanted to see how the plovers plovved."

All day the wind had been gusting in off the ocean, and the Pacific can be cold in February. However, as the sun started to sink, the sea breezes died away, getting ready for the change-over, when the night wind would blow from the shore out to sea. For that reason it seemed a little warmer than it had been—it wasn't, really, but the wind chill had gone.

"Gorgeous sunset," Dipper said, standing next to Mabel and gazing westward.

"It is," Mabel said. She took out her camera and snapped a series of photos. The sun was sinking into the ocean—or it looked that way—and in doing so, it slipped beneath the lower boundary of some streaky, sinuous clouds, all red and gold above a shimmering, glittering blue Pacific.

"I might try a painting of that," Mabel said. "Or maybe make a sweater pattern."

The twins stood side by side, hands in jacket pockets, elbows touching, and watched the sun sink.

"Sunsets make me sad," Mabel said.

"They shouldn't. Imagine you're halfway around the world," Dipper said. "Over there a beautiful sun's just coming up on a whole new day. Every sunset is also a sunrise. It just depends on how you look at it."

Mabel made a little considering grunt. "Sometimes, Brobro, you can really talk sense. Hey. Thank you for making a day for me."

"It's for me, too, Mabel. We ought to do more things together."

"I'd really like that." She was quiet for a few minutes. The sun vanished and she said, "Show's over. Time to go home. Hey, Dip?"

"Yeah?"

"When the weather warms up, think we might bring Billy to the zoo? Maybe his sisters, if they want to come? If his parents are worried about the trip, we could do the Oakland Zoo with him."

"Don't see why not," Dipper sad as they crunched up the sand toward the parking area.

"Think we could fit him and three other girls in the car?"

"Three girls? Who besides his sisters?" Dipper asked, surprised.

"Well, he's met this girl in his class. Her name's China. They're like best friends now."

"No kidding?" Dipper asked. "Good for him!"

And as Dipper drove them back home, Mabel told him all about how Billy, the kid version of Bill Cipher, was learning the game of romance. In a good way, she said.

Dipper smiled to himself. If Mabel was teaching him, he thought, it would have to be in a good way. He felt better. He hoped Mabel did, too.

She turned on the radio and, like an omen, got an oldies station that had just started &ndra's "T8king Over Midnight."

"Ampersandra! You know the words! Sing along, Dippingsauce!" Mabel said.

He didn't even put up an argument, and singing that and a string of other oldies, they headed across the Bay and back to Piedmont as overhead the stars came out one by one.


	3. Chapter 3

**One More Spring**

**(March 2017)**

* * *

**3\. In like a Lion**

The old saying about March was very nearly true. February ended and March began with blustery winds, some rain, and fluctuating temperatures, from the thirties into the sixties and back again. OK, it was not a master-of-the-pride kind of lion, more like a mellowed-out older lion, but still he roared a little.

Fortunately, the unsettled weather seemed to be external only. Billy and his friend China became an item (in a sixth-grade sort of way) and he perked up and was happier than Mabel had seen him in months. Teek called her so frequently that Mrs. Pines finally suggested she was going to ration Mabel's telephone time if she didn't cut it back a little herself.

Mabel arranged with Teek to set a timer for their nightly talks—thirty minutes. In a way that bothered her, but on the other hand, she found that, knowing their chat times were limited, Teek put a lot more fervor and eagerness into his side of the conversation, and she really liked that.

One Wednesday evening she hung up, sighed dreamily, and danced pirouetting, ballerina fashion, into Dipper's room, without knocking, because she was Mabel, and said, "It will work, Broseph! It will work!"

"Humh?" asked Dipper, who was threading his way through a complex and advanced problem in probability in his calculus textbook. "What will?"

"My and Teek's long-distance relationship!" she said. She laughed in a mad-scientist _bwah-hah-hah_ sort of way. "This relationship is alive, I tell you! It's alive! It's a-li-hi-hi-hive!"

She curtsied and danced out of the room.

Because of Mabel's impression of Dr. Frankenstein's birth announcement for his creature, Dipper had just bitten his Ticonderoga Number 2 in half. He spat out the splinters, reached for a fresh pencil, and told his calculus text, "I think I've created a monster." However, he was smiling when he said that.

* * *

During the second week in March, Mabel pasted an article from the school newspaper into a special scrapbook she was compiling not for herself, but for Dipper. It read, in part,

* * *

If you haven't noticed, Piedmont has a hot sports team. Not football, that's so last fall. Not baseball. No, the team burning up the stats is our Varsity Track Team.

Coach Dinson says, "This is one for the record books. Our men's and women's track teams are leading the district."

Dinson says he doesn't deserve credit for the winning streak, though. He praises the runners and the team captain, Dipper Pines. "They've got the ability, and he's got the spark that sets the fire," Dinson said.

Dipper Pines, a Senior, in turn says, "The team members deserve the glory. They train hard, and they run their hearts out." His role, he says, is just to organize everything.

But the runners themselves disagree. "Dipper all the way, man," says Charles, "Chuck" Macavoy, Piedmont's ace distance runner. Macavoy so far has clocked three first-place wins, with a second-place and a third as sides. In other words, he's won a ribbon in every meet the team has participated in this year.

"Dipper's the man," Macavoy said. "We joined the JV together as freshmen, and just watching him grow into his strengths as a sprinter has been an inspiration."

The other team members eagerly agree . . . .T

* * *

There was more, but Mabel had circled all the mentions of Dipper's name. "I'm so proud of my modest brother," she wrote underneath the clipping.

She didn't let Dipper know what she was doing with the scrapbook. It was going to be her graduation present to him. And every day it grew a little thicker.

* * *

Dipper, who put a lot of time into studying (Seniors with an A overall average could choose to exempt a few finals) and a lot of time into track practice and meets, was aware in an abstracted sort of way that Mabel was also chairing the annual student art show. What he did not realize—because Mabel had kept it a deep, dark secret—was that she was entering two works of art herself. One he had seen, a sculpture she had made of Waddles and Widdles asleep, with Tripper curled up on Waddles's back.

Looked at from one point of view, it was pure kitsch. But then looked at a little more closely, it was a carefully-observed study, with the pigs and the dogs all displayed in their minute similarities to and differences from each other.

They hadn't been prettied up. The pigs were a little dirty, and if you looked closely, you could see straws clinging to their sides and backs. The dog, lying nearly draped over Waddles's broad back, was obviously a mutt, but a contented and happy mutt. Mabel hadn't produced an imitation. She had captured in soapstone three animals utterly content and at peace with themselves, each other, and the world—it was, in a way, a post-postmodern piece of realism.

She was also entering an oil painting that she had worked on at school for months. Literally months. It was on a twenty-two by eighteen-inch canvas, and it was a landscape. Oils were a recent medium for her. She had done water-colors (the most unforgiving medium) and acrylics, but oils demanded a special touch. Mabel discovered she had that touch. She was critical of the finished painting, but Mr. Stottard, her art teacher, told her she had done well.

Nobody, not even Mabel, knew that Ben Stottard and Mrs. Hesketh, the principal, were so impressed they had sent photos of the painting to the Visual Arts Department at Olmsted and that, based on the photos and an enthusiastic letter from Stottard, Mabel was high in contention for a special scholarship for the gifted that, if she got it, would help pay her way through college.

The art had been finished in February. As mid-March came on, Mabel got more and more involved with staging a student art show to be remembered. Meanwhile, her whole family was in the dark about the oil painting.

No one, not Mom, Dad, or Dipper had so much as seen the work yet. Mabel, who thought it was just OK, still believed they would like it, and she wanted the unveiling to be a surprise.

* * *

Dipper continued to rack up first-place wins in the 200-meter race, which in some ways he found more suited to his abilities than the 100-meter, the race that he'd almost always run in his Junior Varsity years. He didn't know why.

Maybe it was that the 200-meter got him to the point of a second wind at an ideal time, roughly two-thirds of the way in. It was almost mystical, that runner's high, when the struggle became an easy pace, when energy surged through him, when it seemed as if he could run that way for a hundred miles.

Anyway, in eight meets he had taken the gold six times and had placed second twice, both times losing to much taller and longer-legged competitors. Even at that, he'd lost by only a stride or two, neither time by more than two. Once he had the feeling that if the race had gone on another twenty meters, he would have pulled ahead—the guy in the inner lane had sped to an early lead, but Dipper gained as they neared the finish line, his rival visibly faltering.

That was the one he lost by a stride or even less. Very nearly a tie. That loss hurt because Dipper knew that he had almost, almost pulled off the win.

Still, he couldn't complain. He couldn't have asked for more devoted or dedicated runners on the team. They were going into the CCC semi-finals with a wide lead over the next school. Dipper knew they were headed for State, and it made him feel great.

And also made him worry his head off. As he told Wendy when they face-timed after the eighth meet and his sixth first-place finish, "It's not our chances or the track team or anything. It's just . . . me being me, I guess. When things are going this good, I can't help feeling that something terrible's right around the corner."

"Come on, man," Wendy—sitting leaning back against her bed's headboard in her own room up in Gravity Falls, her red hair cascading over both her shoulders—said. "Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you're doing so good 'cause you're so good at what you do?"

"Is that Zen?" Dipper asked with a smile.

"Nope, it's Wen," she said. "Come on, man. I believe in you, Dip. Believe in yourself! What is it with you that makes you such a worrier, dude? You're riding high right now. Enjoy the ride! Hey, there's not a track meet on for the Prom weekend, is there?"

"No, that's a down week for us," Dipper said. "So I'm not gonna be worrying at all about anything except trying not to step on your toes!"

"We'll wow them all," Wendy said with confidence.

And that was true; because when they touched, they could hear each other's thoughts and, even more, could sense each other's intentions, emotions, and movements. That made them incredibly graceful together. True, whenever Dipper danced with any other girl, he tended to be a little bit clumsy and, let's face it, awkward, but he and Wendy—Well, Fred and Ginger could watch them and wonder how they did it and never, ever guess their secret.

* * *

On the evening of the art-show opening, Dipper and his mom and dad attended the Art Club banquet (nothing special, turkey cutlets, mashed potatoes, and mixed veggies with a dessert of brownie bars topped with whipped cream). Mr. Stottard announced various awards and honors.

Dipper wondered because Mabel, whom everyone said was excellent at art, was passed over for Graphic Design, Color Media, Three-Dimensional Media . . . he started to fume. However, at last, Mr. Stottard said, "Now the very special award: Art Student of the Year. Mabel Pines, please come forward."

He made a little speech about how Mabel was so good in so many fields that she deserved this special award, one not always given. "But this year," he said, "it's my honor and my pleasure to present this award to a young woman who not only mastered her art—but also taught me so much. Mabel, thank you."

Mabel accepted the plaque and gave her thank-you speech.

Here we go, Dipper thought, equally pleased that his sister had won the award and apprehensive about what would come out of her mouth.

But she said, "Thank you, Mr. Stottard. Thank you, fellow students. Thank you, Dad and Mom and my brother."

And sat down to tremendous applause.

The library had been transformed into an art gallery. Sketches and paintings hung on the walls. Sculptures stood on the low bookcases, every work spotlighted by a small high-intensity lamp. Mobiles hung from the ceilings.

At the very back, in a place of honor near the librarians' desk, hung Mabel's painting. Mr. Stottard had arranged things so a banner concealed it until you were just at the right viewing angle. When they reached it—

"Oh, my gosh!" Dipper murmured.

"You like it?" Mabel asked.

He nodded because he was too full of wonder and joy to speak just then.

Mabel had painted the Mystery Shack, not with all the improvements, the new roof, the added wings and rooms that Soos had built over the years, but exactly as it had appeared when she and Dipper first saw it, that June back when they were twelve.

As with the pig sculpture, it was a work of realism: The Shack, seen through a frame of pine boughs, dappled in summer sunlight. The view angled diagonally toward the museum porch and the gift-shop porch, lovingly detailed—even Grunkle Stan's half-assed patching of the roof, just random boards nailed over missing cedar shingles, was there.

Dipper saw the totem pole, half-concealed by pine branches and morning haze, but he knew it well. He read the signs, in all their chintzy glory—the big MYSTERY SHACK (the red S in SHACK had been in place the first day they showed up, but fell off not long afterward), and the exaggeration WORLD FAMOUS in a hand-lettered sign on the gift-shop roof, and GIFTS above the door. There sat the cooler and the Pitt's vending machine. On the roof he saw the question-mark weathervane.

It was all there, in full detail, everything as if glimpsed early on an endless bright morning with a few wisps of fog still clinging to the pine boughs. Here an orb-spinning spiderweb sparkled, diamonded with dew. There a Gnome stood quiet on the lawn—most people would have thought it was a lawn ornament, but Dipper recognized Shmebulock. He saw the hint of an attenuated humanoid figure against a tree—or was it merely highlights and shadows? No, Dipper somehow recognized the elusive Hide-Behind—but a viewer had to know what to look for to have a hope of noticing it.

He got the impression that in the painting it was so early the lights had just been turned on—the gift-shop window glowed in diamonds of yellow and orange (_Soos holds a power drill as he prepares to put up a new wall shelf. Wendy is yawning and propping her feet up on the counter just inside_!), the lantern over the announcement board off the museum porch glowed warmly (_Grunkle Stan just stepped back through the door after lighting it and putting up the new big NO REFUNDS sign!),_ and the triangular window in the peak of the roof—their room—is lit up, too, as if the twelve-year-old Mystery Twins have just that moment awakened (_Mabel is saying good-morning to the mold spots on the rafters—"Hello, Daryl!" and I'm about to be sent into the spooky part of the forest to hammer up some direction signs to the Shack, and I'll find the Journal, but I don't know that yet!)_

Finally Dipper could speak, though all he could manage was a whispered, "Oh, Sis!"

Mabel's painting is the kind of work that an observer can look at for an hour and still keep noticing little things: the way one of the triangular pennants on the long curving rope is frayed, or the strange little goat peeking around the corner, or the way a distant bird in the sky really looks more like a pterosaur.

It was as if you could tell some mystery lurked in each soft dark shadow. After a while you wished you could step into the painting, open the gift-shop door, and see what this place was all about. Or at least Dipper had that feeling.

He teared up when he read the print-out label beneath the frame.

Mabel had titled her painting _Where the Dreams are Real_.

Dipper hugged her. He would tell her how wonderful it all was later. Just then he could only repeat—

"Oh, Sis!"


	4. Chapter 4

**One More Spring**

**(April 2017)**

* * *

**4: Senior Prom and LAX**

Wendy and Teek flew down the evening before Piedmont's Senior Prom, and Dipper and Wendy picked them up. The twins' mom had worked out the arrangements: Wendy would have the guest room, Teek could sleep in Dipper's room, and Dipper would take the foldout bed in the basement. He didn't really mind that, because it was a huge finished basement that served as the family library, he had a compact bathroom down there, and if he couldn't sleep, he had hundreds of books to choose from.

He did wonder, though, about Teek. Teek, in Dipper's room, would be just down the hall past the mixed-used music and craft room from Mabel's. Heck, Mabel had slipped down the hall to wake up Dipper many times in the middle of the night. However, prior to the weekend, Dipper had made Mabel, while showing both her hands and both bare feet, promise that she wouldn't sneak into Teek's room, or vice-versa, or even bring up the subject, and if Teek should mention it, she would say no.

"I promise," Mabel said. "Why'd you want me to take off my shoes?"

"Because I know you," Dipper said. "I wanted to make sure you weren't crossing your fingers or your toes."

"OK, give you that one," Mabel had told him.

Teek had managed to get a half-day off from school—he, like Dipper and Mabel, was a Senior, and seniors had their privileges—so the plane landed in Oakland at a little past four-thirty that afternoon. Dipper drove Helen Wheels back from the airport—Teek and Mabel were in the back seat, making up for missed kissportunities, and Wendy rode shotgun, relatively quiet. Her prom dress and Teek's tux were both safely stored in the trunk.

"What's the news from Gravity Falls?" Dipper asked Wendy as they pulled out of the airport lot on their way to the Pines's house.

"Oh, 'bout the same as always," Wendy said. "Abuelita came back middle of the week. Soos is sprucing up—some paint, stuff like that. We're opening the Shack next Tuesday. Um, any mysteries? Crop circles! We've had a few of 'em. Of course, nothing much is growing yet, but in some fallow cornfields a few circles have showed up, dry cornstalks flattened out, you know, and there was one in the tall grass near the Lonely Man. Dr. Pines came and investigated."

"And the results were inconclusive," Dipper said.

"Yeah, he tell you?"

Dipper shook his head. "No, but if he'd found anything, he would have let me know. Are these circles complex ones, or—"

"Just perfectly round flattened-out vegetation," Wendy said. "No suspicious signs or symbols. Soos is looking for new merch—"

"Prints!" Mabel yelled from the back seat.

"Ow, my ear!" Teek said.

"What was that?" Wendy asked.

Dipper began, "Mabel did this great painting—"

"In oils!"

"—in _oil paints," _Dipper continued, "of the Mystery Shack. Mr. Stottard—he's the art teacher—arranged to have a hundred color prints made from it—"

"Two hundred!" Mabel said.

"Mabel, you tell it," Dipper said.

"No, I'm too modest. You do it, Dipper!"

"OK, but don't interrupt. He was going to do a hundred, but Dad gave him the money to make it two hundred instead. Mabel's giving one to every teacher she ever had in high school, and there's still a hundred and seventy left over, so—"

"Soos can sell 'em at twenty bucks apiece and make tons of money!" Mabel said. "And I'll split it with him fifty-fifty!"

Wendy gave Dipper a sideways glance. Posters and such weren't always big sellers. "I'll tell him," she said.

"Yeah, and I'm gonna sign and number these—start with a hundred, and call 'em limited editions, personally numbered and signed by the artist. He should clean up!"

"I'll tell him," Wendy repeated. She reached to caress Dipper's neck. _I know Soos will go for it. Is it a good picture?_

—_It's fantastic, Wendy. You'll see it as soon as we get home—Dad had it framed, and it's hanging in the entryway._

_OK. I hope Mabes won't be disappointed if they don't all sell out on the first day!_

Sure enough, at the house Alex Pines showed the painting off first thing. Despite her earlier misgivings, Wendy was impressed, and Teek just squeezed Mabel's hand as if he couldn't believe his girl had such artistic talent. "Yeah, I think prints are a great idea," Wendy said just as Wanda Pines came in.

Wanda welcomed them and said, "Dinner is ready! I know it's early, but I thought you might be hungry."

Mrs. Pines had outdone herself with a big roast-turkey dinner with all the trimmings—as though she were making up for the subdued Thanksgiving the family had observed the previous fall, when they were still mourning the death of Alex's mother, Monica. She hugged Wendy, asked her about the flight down, and hugged Teek not quite so tightly.

First Mabel and Dipper hauled in Wendy's and Teek's baggage and hung their prom clothes, and then everyone gathered in the dining room for dinner. "Welcome to the house," Alex Pines said. "Did you like the painting-?"

"Dad!" Mabel said, her eyes on the drumstick he was carving. "Don't bore Teek and Wendy by bragging about my painting. They saw it and they liked it. Let's talk about something interesting, like how I designed my own prom dress!"

Dad didn't take the subtle hint, but he did change the subject: "Wendy, have you made any improvements to the Dart?"

They finished their meal, Teek and Wendy offered to help with clean-up, and Mom firmly refused. "You're our guests! Mabel and Dipper can help, though."

It took a while—Wanda had gone overboard with the side dishes, and since there was more than a dishwasher load, Dipper wound up washing a sink full of pots and pains while Mabel dried and stored. They heard occasional bursts of laughter from the living room as Teek and Wendy chatted with their parents. Dipper also heard the occasional grinding of Mabel's teeth.

At about ten, the parents tactfully went off to bed, and Dipper and Mabel had a chance to catch up. In addition to crop circles, there had been sightings in Gravity Falls of a possible leprechaun—a little guy somewhat larger than Gnomes, wearing green. "The Gnomes won't talk about him," Wendy said. "But they say he's bad luck. So far nothing's happened—somebody saw it run across their lawn one night, somebody else said it scooted across the road while they were driving and they glimpsed it just for a second in the headlights, stuff like that. Nothing much to go on. I figure you'll want to investigate if people are still seeing it this summer," Wendy told Dipper.

"My dad says that leprechauns aren't like the American stories at all," said Teek, whose father had been born to parents who had been born and raised in Ireland before emigrating to the USA. "He heard tales from my grandpa about them. He says they can be dangerous."

"We'll put that on our list for investigating," Dipper said.

They talked a little bit about this and that—everybody was doing fine at school, Teek's admission to his film-arts college out in Georgia, south of Atlanta, had been confirmed, and he even had a dorm room all to himself—

"Waugh!" Mabel said. "No fair. I'm gonna be crammed in with three divas—"

"You don't know they'll be divas," Dipper pointed out.

"Trust me, they will be!" Mabel insisted. "But I'll bet it's gonna cost you an arm and a leg, Teek, private dorm room!"

"They're all private," Teek murmured. "And, um, it's paid for by my scholarship."

"_WAUGH_!" Mabel repeated, with more emphasis.

* * *

Not much point in describing Dipper's and Teek's tuxedos. They were pretty standard, black tuxes, black ties, a touch of color in the red cummerbunds, that's about it. The girls, though, looked gorgeous. Both had their hair done Saturday morning, and when in the late afternoon they came downstairs, they were visions. Mabel's off-the-shoulder pink prom dress, accented in white, made her look shapely and alluring, and Teek's fingers trembled as he pinned on her corsage of matching pink roses.

Wendy's dress was apple-green, satin, showing not quite as much décolletage as Mabel's. Her long hair was done up in a beautiful coif, and she wore a string of pearls at her throat. This time—unlike at her own senior prom, which had been the previous year—Wendy's corsage, white dendrobium orchids, was not intended for wear on the wrist. Dipper proudly pinned it on.

Next came the obligatory photos in front of the stairwell, and then Dad re-hung Mabel's painting to be in the background and more photos, and finally the limo showed up, and Mom hugged everybody, sniffled a little, and said, "All right, Prom Night, I know. So we're not setting a curfew, but you behave yourselves. And call us when you're ready to come home, and Alex will come and pick you up."

"Not paying for the limo for all night long!" Alex explained, momentarily sounding like his uncle Stan.

At the Prom they didn't attract the most attention—though Mabel might have been in the running for Prom Queen early on, when everything shook out, Cathy Harrison, probably the prettiest and most popular girl in the class, won the title, and Chug Chagall, football quarterback, was named King of the Prom. Dipper had not remotely been up for consideration, mainly because he had very few friends except for the track team and he was the quiet type of guy that people just didn't think about.

No matter. The pressure was off, and the four had a great time. A lot of guys wanted to dance with Mabel, though Teek got his full share of dances. Lots of people came up to be introduced to Dipper's date, but—and this secretly pleased Dipper—she looked so beautiful and so poised that she intimidated the guys, and they didn't have the nerve to ask her for a dance. So he had her in his arms all night long, except for the fast dances.

He did get some comments now and then after a slow dance. A girl he recognized but whose name he did not know said, "Dipper! You're a great dancer!"

Ah, if she'd only known it was because of Wendy's and Dipper's telepathic link!

The Prom lasted until midnight. Then Mabel called their dad, and he drove Helen Wheels to the school gym to pick them up, and Mabel drove them back to the house and let him out, and the kids spent the early morning hours visiting the clubs that were open to teens on Prom Night and seeing some of the sights, and they wound up at dawn parked on Grizzly Peak, overlooking the Bay and gazing at the lights way off in San Francisco and the traffic on the distant Golden Gate Bridge.

And finally, sleepy but happy, they settled in for a post-Prom breakfast at the Alta, an upscale restaurant with a great view of the city. Wendy took the wheel on the way back to the house. Teek and Mabel had conked out in the back seat, and Dipper leaned against Wendy, exhausted but elated. For him the high point of the whole dance had come around eleven, when a girl named Teal, a friend of Mabel's that he knew casually, had been standing talking to them as they all had a cup of punch and had suddenly gasped, staring at Wendy's left hand—and her ring.

"Wait a minute!" she's said. "You—you're engaged! Uh, not to, I mean to, to—?"

"Yup," Wendy said. She kissed Dipper's cheek. "To my fiancé here."

* * *

Two track meets later—and in the second one, Dipper eked out another first-place, just barely edging out one of the tall guys who'd beaten him before—after having cleared it all with Mom and Dad and after having arranged things at school (it wasn't hard; even the teachers were getting casual about the soon-to-depart Senior class), Dipper and Mabel drove to the airport at nine o'clock on Friday morning, boarded an airplane for the ninety-minute flight to LAX, and settled back, Dipper to read the airline magazine and Mabel to throw up.

She'd sort of learned to control it, but on this occasion she didn't want to u pre-dose herself with Dramamine because it made her sleepy. Fortunately, she had the window seat, with Dipper between her and a shocked-looking middle-aged woman, and Mabel used only one airsickness bag. "That's out of the way!" she said brightly, wiping her mouth with a tissue and ringing for the attendant to come and remove the bag.

The rest of the trip was uneventful and short. They were to meet Teek and Wendy near a coffee shop outside the security checkpoint of Terminal Five, so they walked, wheeling their carry-on bags behind them, a long way until they got there—and they saw Wendy jump up from a table and wave. "You beat us here!" Mabel said after the obligatory hug. "Where's Teek?"

"Men's room," Wendy said. "He'll be back in a minute. Want some coffee, Dip?"

"What I want is this," he said, kissing her.

"Aw, get a room!" Mabel said, but that didn't stop her from snapping a photo. A scrapbookprotunity was a scrapbookprotunity, after all.

"What's the plan?" Dipper asked as they sat around a small table.

"Soon as Teek gets back, we go to pick-up. As we start out, I'll call the contact number and they'll send a limo for us."

"Ooh-la-la!" exclaimed Mabel. "Two limo rides in one month! I could get used to this!"

Teek returned, he and Mabel embraced and—Dipper was glad to see—did not entwine themselves quite as much as they often did while completing the exercise. Then they all hiked to the lower-level passenger pick-up zone as Wendy made the call.

"Four of us," Dipper heard her tell someone. "Two ladies, two gentlemen." She winked at Mabel. "OK, one of the girls has real long red hair, and she's wearing a green lightweight sweater and dark-green slacks and a blue-and-white baseball cap. The other girl has brown hair and she's wearing a deep pink sweater with an embroidery of a ghost and the word "BOO" on the front and a brushed-denim skirt. The guys both have dark hair and are wearing sports jackets, one dark blue, one tan, and no ties." She swiveled her phone and asked, "Where's your headgear, Dip?"

He fished in his backpack and pulled it out. "One of the guys," Wendy said, "is bareheaded—black hair—and the other is wearing a brown Ushanka. Ushanka. It's a hat! A fur hat, you know—yeah, a trapper's cap! Right, we're on the way."

As they found the place, she said, "Didn't know what a Ushanka was!"

"So many people!" Mabel exclaimed. "Hey, anybody see any movie stars?" She craned her neck, but no actors appeared. Still, she was Mabel. "Hello, friends!" she called to passers-by. "We're here to tape a big-name TV show!"

Nobody stopped for her autograph, though.

"I think that's our ride, guys!" Wendy said, waving. A black Lincoln with the red-and-white Webflix logo stenciled on the door glided to the curb, and an athletic-looking young uniformed driver hopped out and hustled over. "Corduroy party?" he asked.

"That's us, cutie!" Mabel said.

The driver opened a rear door. "I'll store your luggage," he said. "Help yourself to anything from the fridge."

They sat facing each other—though Dipper made Mabel change seats. "You do not want to be with Mabel riding in a vehicle where she's facing backwards," he told Teek. So Dipper and Wendy took the backward-facing ones, and Teek and Mabel rode across from them. Mabel took the driver at his word, passing around water and then stuffing snacks into her pockets.

"Expecting a famine?" Dipper asked her.

"You never know, Brobro!" she responded.

The trunk and front door slammed and a moment later, the driver's voice came over a speaker: "Everybody fasten your seatbelts. We're heading for the Webflix Studios in Burbank. We're driving north on 405 and then we'll turn east on the Ventura Freeway. If there's not a crash, we should arrive at the studio around eleven forty-five, and you guys are invited for lunch with the stars. The recording starts at two this afternoon and runs until five. If you want, I can talk about the sights, or if you want privacy, just hit the mute button—that's the blue one."

"Talk away, sweetie!" Mabel said. "Tell us when we can see the Hollywood sign!"

The driver chuckled. "Well, in Burbank we'll be sort of behind it. But tomorrow the recording session starts at ten a.m. and ends around one. When are you guys returning home?"

"Sunday morning," Wendy said. "We're staying at the—"

"Lawernce in Burbank, I know," the driver told her. "Just around the corner from the studio. OK, tomorrow I'm off-duty after noon, but if you'd like, I can take you on a sight-seeing trip starting around two. After the taping, you guys have some lunch and I'll meet you at your hotel if you want to trip. Three hours, a hundred and fifty dollars."

"Done!" Mabel said. "You are a real sweetheart! What's your name?"

"Leon Yansen, with a 'Y.'"

Dipper asked, "Are you trying to find a producer for a screenplay?"

"I'm working on one! How'd you know?" Leon asked.

"Just a hunch," Dipper said. "Yeah, the tour would be great. Glad to support a writer!"

To Mabel's disappointment, the trip to Burbank didn't show them very much—a few fleeting vistas, but, let's face it, the view from a freeway is mainly of things that spring up around a freeway. They reached the studio, Leon pulled into a slot, and he got out and opened the door for them. "Here you go," he said, handing them cardboard tags with strings, the kind you get when you check a bag in an airport. "Everybody write your full names here, and I'll drop these off at the hotel for you. I'll run you over there after the taping ends this afternoon at four, and you can pick up your luggage at the desk when you check in. Keep anything you'll need."

"I've got my backpack," Dipper said. The other three stuffed various things in there, and Mabel carried—unusually for someone so talented at Hammerspace—a purse. Leon tied the tags to the bags, and the four followed his directions into a spacious reception area.

Wendy told the lady at the big semi-circular desk who they were, and the woman brightened up immediately. "We're expecting you!" she said. "I'll ring for a page and we'll get you all set."

Mabel roamed the reception room, gawking at photos on the walls. She recognized most of the actors—"Brandon! Leeva—I love her! Ooh, Cliff and Creighton! So cute!" and so on.

"Ready for lunch?" someone asked.

Dipper whirled around. "Jasyn Torque!" he exclaimed.

"Yeah, hi, man," said the lean, sort-of young guy, grinning. He was dressed casually, rumpled white shirt, khakis, white sneakers. He gave Wendy a peck on the cheek and said, "Wendy! Good to see you again. Yeah, I'm Jasyn Torque, a Ghost Harasser, guys."

Wendy introduced them—Mabel insisted that they have their photos taken then and there, so the receptionist obliged. Then Jasyn led them to a small commissary, where crew members went through a cafeteria line and then sat at round tables. "Uh, where is Craig, Mr. Torque?" Dipper asked timidly.

"He's already in hair and make-up," Jasyn said. "He's an old guy, takes him a lot longer to look presentable. Hey, we'll have to get you guys back there too, because you'll be on-stage with us—"

"We will?" Dipper asked, his voice sounding like a boy soprano's striving for a high C.

"Yep, for the interview, and by the way, everybody calls me Jace. Except on the air. Then we're Jasyn and Craig, but he likes it if you call him 'Buttface.'"

"I am so gonna—" Mabel started.

"Nuh-uh," Dipper told her.

They got their sandwiches and drinks and sat with one of Dipper's idols, mostly talking about the Shack and Gravity Falls—Jasyn said the guys had enjoyed their trip up there, and the whole place was so weird it was cool—and Dipper kept forgetting to swallow. Jasyn said, "Our only disappointment was that we didn't get any ghostly activity on camera."

Dipper gulped and started to say something that came out garbled. He started again: "In the attic bedroom there's sort of a haunted closet. I can probably get you some footage of something we call the Invisible Wizard."

"Before July first?" Jasyn asked, sounding interested.

"Pretty sure, yeah."

"Let's talk later, then, Dipper," Jasyn said.

"Sure thing—Jace," Dipper said, without stopping to wonder if he had just stepped into trouble.


	5. Chapter 5

**One More Spring**

**(April 2017)**

* * *

**5\. Live! On Stage with the Ghost Harassers**

Dipper didn't get airsick, but he began to fear he would be stage-sick. After their lunch, Dipper, Wendy, and Mabel went to hair and makeup. Jace slipped into a barber's chair, as did Dipper, Mabel, and Wendy, and three cosmeticians began to work on them. Dipper agreed not to wear the hat, they brushed his hair, and his operator asked, "How about this birthmark, dear? Cover it or not?"

"Could I just leave my hair over it?" Dipper asked.

"Mm. I guess so. I'll spray it, though, so it won't bounce around. That would be distracting."

Next to Dipper on his left, Mabel said, "Gimme the works! Make me look even more beautiful!"

On his right, Wendy said, "Just the basics for me, please."

They each got a light coat of foundation, the girls some lip and cheek color, and a light powdering ("It gets hot on stage"). A page came and took Teek.

"Where's he going?" Mabel called.

"Front row center, Ma'am," the page said.

"Teek, wave at me so I can spot you!"

"OK," Teek said in a relieved voice. He hadn't wanted to be on stage, anyway.

Craig Grantley, the bearded, heavier, and somewhat older member of the Ghost Harassers, came in and harassed Jasyn. Grantley was in costume—sort of a khaki explorer's get-up—with a small towel tucked in around the neckline. When Jasyn, newly made-up, got out of his chair and said, "I'll see you on stage, Wendy, Mabel, Dipper," Grantley slipped into the chair and the cosmetician spritzed his beard with something.

"Hi, Wendy," Grantley said. "So these are the grand-kids of the owner, huh?"

"Grand-niece and nephew!" Mabel chirped. "I'm Mabel, he's Dippingsauce. Better known as Dipper. And Stanley Pines is the guy you already interviewed."

"Yeah, I remember him well!" Grantley chuckled. "He's a trip! I think we'll have a good half-hour installment once the footage is edited down. Done, Mavis? Thanks, hon. I better go check out the stage one last time. Mike! Where's Mike!"

"Here," said a skinny guy holding a clipboard. He handed Grantley a bottle of water.

"Tell the kids about the set-up, OK?" Grantley said as he pulled the towel from his collar and tossed it into a hamper.

"Sure thing."

When they got out of their barber chairs, Mabel and Wendy looked a little strange, but the cosmetician said, "Don't worry, hon. The camera will see you differently from the way you look in the mirror right now. It'll be fine."

Mike waved and said, "Hey, I'm Mike. You can remember that 'cause I'm wearing the mike." In fact, he wore a headset. "OK, so here's the drill. The audience is waiting to come in now. Once they're seated, Elaine Petty—you probably saw her on some of the new epi—no, wait, the season doesn't start until June, sorry. She's been on a bunch of hair-product ads, you might remember her from there."

"What brand?" Mabel asked.

"Awesome Aromatics. Anyway, Elaine is the new assistant to the Ghost Harassers. She's real pretty and in the new version of the show for Webflix, she'll be, like, the communications director for the guys. You'll see a lot of her sprinkled throughout the episodes as she gives the guys radio messages about the dangers they face. Anyways, Elaine's gonna go out and warm up the audience and talk to them about how to react and no cell phones and so on. Then she'll take a few questions. After about half an hour, Jace and Craig will enter. They'll talk to the audience a little about the new series, and then they'll show some teaser footage from the show they shot in Oregon. Then they'll call you guys out and let you introduce yourselves. I've got a list of questions they'll ask, but they probably won't stick to the same order, so study the questions and just have fun and be prepared. If you mess up, don't worry. We're gonna shoot about three hours' worth, counting today and tomorrow, and we'll edit that down to ten, fifteen minutes."

Dipper started to read through the questions and wonder if he'd even be able to speak when they called on him. "Tell us your name." "Uh, uh, Dinner Pipps. I mean Pidder Nipes. Uh, I don't know!"

Wendy, though, seemed laid-back as usual as she glanced at the paper, and Mabel was asking stuff about ad-libs and whether she could sing a song from _My Fair Lady _("No, copyright and all"). Dipper finally asked Mike where the restroom was, and Mike said, "Right over there, under the sign that says 'Restrooms.'"

When he got back, Mabel nudged him and said, "XYZ, Brobro! Ha! Made you look!"

Mike patiently explained that they'd record for about thirty minutes, take a fifteen-minute break, then do another thirty. He took them to the stage—the route lay over a wilderness of looping cables and behind some flats—and showed them the layout. The set was a little like a talk show—Jace and Craig would sit in director's chairs on a platform, a flat behind them giving a faux view of Hollywood through the windows, and a long sofa accommodated their guests. Plastic greenery decorated the set and concealed some of the trailing wires. A big screen just to the left of the backdrop flat currently showed the Ghost Harassers' logo, but would show video for the audience later. The director, Freddy, came over and met them and checked their appearance. "All right," he said. "When you enter, Wendy, you come in first and sit downstage on the sofa—"

"That means closest to the audience," Mabel said confidently. She waved. "Hi, Teek!"

The director looked mildly annoyed. "Then, uh, Dipper? Dipper. OK, Dipper, you'll come in second and sit next to Wendy, and Mabel, you sit upstage of your brother, OK? Wait for the assistant to give you your cues, then walk on briskly. Try it out."

They went and sat on the sofa, and the director yelled, "How's the composition, Avie?"

A voice from the darkness said, "Looks good, Clint. Can the guy in the middle sit a little farther back?"

"Yeah, don't block me!" Mabel said, elbowing her brother.

Dipper scooted back a little. "Is that OK?"

"Lots better. Just remember to keep your back against the cushion, sir, OK?"

Someone yelled, "House open in ten minutes!"

"Ten minutes, thank you," said the director. "OK, guys, there are two cameras on stage, two more from up in the booths. Remember not to look directly at the cameras. That's a big no-no. Now go off that way—"

"Stage left," Mabel said.

"Uh, yes, stage left. There's a waiting area there, restroom and bottled water available if you need either. You'll be miked over there and we'll ask you to say a few words to get sound levels. Don't talk or make a lot of noise after that, but don't worry, after that the mikes won't be live until you're onstage and seated. Lainie, mike them!"

They found their way over to a kind of three-sided booth with two rows of chairs, five to a row. A slim girl there in jeans and a dark blue sweatshirt said, "Hi, I'm Deena, let me put your microphones on for you."

She did so, quickly and expertly, clipping the mikes to their collars and threading the wires down through their clothes and to plastic boxes which she hung from their belts on their upstage sides, and then spoke into her own microphone: "Dolph, mike checks, mikes 4, 6, and 7. Wendy 4, Dipper 6, Mabel 7. Ready?" She said to Wendy, "Say a few words. Your name and home town will do."

"I'm Wendy Corduroy from Gravity Falls, Oregon," Wendy said.

"Great. Same drill, Dipper."

"I'm uh, I'm D-Dipper Pines. Uh. From Piedmont, California."

Someone, presumably Dolph, called, "Little louder."

Dipper swallowed. "I'm Dipper Pines and I'm from Piedmont, California."

"'That's the way!" said the voice from the dark.

Deena said, "Excellent. Mabel."

"Hi, you wonderful people. My name is Mabel Pines, and I love pigs and puppies and rainbows. You can call me Dream Girl! But I got a boyfriend, so you can look, but you can't touch!"

Dipper heard laughter offstage and Dolph the sound guy yelled, "Perfect! And I think I want to ask you out on a date!"

"Too late! My special guy's already in the audience!" Mabel said cheerfully.

"One minute to house."

Several people—including Mabel—said, "One minute, thank you."

Within another quarter of an hour, an excited audience had crammed into the theater. The kids could hear them murmuring and laughing. Then a voice like Dipper's in his story about his temporarily getting a professional voiceover artist's voice boomed, "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the studio audience for a brand! New! Season! Of _Ghost Harassers_!"

From where he was sitting, Dipper couldn't see much, but the stage lights came on. The audience was cheering and applauding—either spontaneously because they were fans or perhaps because a big red APPLAUSE sign had lit up. The disembodied voice said, "Joining the team for this new season will be the beautiful lady you'll soon love, the girl with the glow, the lady in the know, give it up for Elaine Petty!"

Dipper got a glimpse of a long-haired, long-legged blonde in a sparkly pantsuit bounding out on stage, hair swinging. "Hi, everybody!" she said.

"Hi, Elaine!" they yelled back.

"Are you all ready for the comeback of the Ghost Harassers?"

"Yeah!"

She stamped her foot. "Oh, come _on,_ you can do better than that! Are you ready?"

"YEAH!"

"One more time! ARE! YOU! READY?"

"YYYEAAAHHHH!"

She talked to the audience, reminding them to turn off their phones and explaining what they were doing—"You'll see bits from one of the new episodes up here on this screen. Now, we'll be shooting video of you out in the audience, and we want you to react. If something funny happens, feel free to laugh! If it gets scary, look scared! And if a ghost pops up, scream! Let me hear some terrified screams!"

Yips and yells and yowls answered her, and she said, "Remember, the more you react the better the chance you'll have of seeing yourself on this episode when it hits Webflix on July fourteenth! Now are you ready to meet your favorite guys? Come on out, Jasyn Torque and Craig Grantley!"

"Sorry, forgot," murmured Mike. He stepped forward and did something and a monitor came to life, showing the stage, the pretty-as-advertised Elaine, and the guys. They bounded onstage, stood on either side of her and did a group bow.

"Wow," Craig said. "Hey, Jasyn, I think this is our most enthusiastic audience so far!"

"I think you're right!" Jasyn said. "Of course, they're only the third!"

"Yeah, but they're excited 'cause Elaine came out before you showed up with your ugly mug!"

Jasyn struck a pose. "Please! The best defense against ghosts is to scare THEM first!"

Then for several minutes they talked to the audience and fielded questions—Yes, it's the same show, yes, the format's a little different, oh, yes, they would see some very spooky images, and so on.

Then Dipper watched as they played unedited footage that they had shot up in Gravity Falls. On the recording, Elaine did the short intro: "Up in Oregon we found a secluded valley where the natives claim all kinds of weird things go on. And the weirdest place is the museum they guys will visit—The Mystery Shack! Let's join Craig and Jasyn as they search for Secret Spirits of the Northwest!"

Then Craig and Jasyn narrated the silent parts live from onstage: "This is the entrance to the hidden valley of Gravity Falls. Very eerie looking landscapes!"

"Yeah, man, check out those cliffs."

Some shots of downtown, some of the waterfall. Then Jasyn said, "This is the Mystery Shack, which is advertised as the place where the dreams—and sometimes the nightmares!—are real. Meet Mr. Stanley Pines, the founder and owner of the Mystery Shack. You're going to hear an interview with him."

Stan had been in fine form that day, speaking of the mysteries you might encounter—"Little bearded men, very disturbing! They say there's a prehistoric monster in the depths of the lake! Look up in the sky and you might even glimpse a pterodactyl. If she attacks you, punch her in the eye! People in town will tell you stories of shapeshifters and dream demons and other spooks! But for my money, the spookiest place in the whole Valley is right here where we're standing—the world-famous Mystery Shack!" He struck a theatrical pose on the lawn, lifting his eight-ball cane to point at the Shack, grinning as broadly as he could.

A cut, and then in the Museum, Soos, who looked a little ill-at-ease in his Mr. Mystery costume, said, "Oh, yeah, dudes, there's real mysterious things here."

Jasyn said, "This is Jesús Ramirez, who started working for the Mystery Shack as a handyman and who now is the CEO of the daily operations."

"This one time," Soos said, "my Abuelita—that's my grandmother, dawgs—got, like, haunted by these mysterious floating blue orbs! They turned out to be, like, spooks or something from the far future! And that all ended when an angel paid her a visit and she vacuumed up the ghosts and we got rid of them! True story. I'll take you to the Bottomless Pit later. Oh, and I killed a fairy once with a fly swatter—I thought it was a hornet! And monsters have come round in the night and, like howled and stuff—once it was a banshee!"

"Aren't you scared to stay here?" Craig asked on-camera.

"No way, dude!" Soos said, laughing. "Stuff like that just makes life exciting! Like the time these characters from video games came to life? One had a crush on me! And another one punched out a pterodactyl bro of mine. Crazy bonkers stuff, man."

There was more of both Stan and Soos, but then about the same amount of footage for both of them combined of Wendy. The cameraman evidently loved her. There was lots of video of her showing tourists around, walking down the trail and pointing at the Bottomless Pit, then at the Talking Rock pseudo-pre-Columbian stone, and so on. Dipper noticed with relief that they didn't go near the Bill Cipher effigy.

Then she got an interview. "I'm Wendy Corduroy," she said to the camera. "I'm the Manager of the Mystery Shack. And, yeah, I've seen some pretty weird things. I grew up in the Valley, and I've gone on a couple of investigations with some friends of mine."

An inaudible question.

"Oh, for instance, once we encountered a couple of ghosts—can't tell you where, because it was on private property, and we weren't supposed to be there, but it was an old married couple, and they made spooky things happen, man! Terrified us all for a while there."

An hour had gone by when, on stage, Craig said, "That's a taste of our footage. Let's take about a fifteen-minute stretch break and you'll see us in action as we investigate. Then how would you like to meet, in person, Wendy Corduroy?"

A very loud group cheer.

* * *

A little more than fifteen minutes later, Deena said, "OK, guys, your turn. Come and line up here—Wendy, Dipper, Mabel. Good. Now, never look straight into the camera. Look at the audience instead. And remember where and how to sit. Dipper, it'd be nice if you stood until the ladies are seated. I'll touch you each on the shoulder, and then just go out at a good speed, don't look like you're running, wave at the audience if you feel like it, shake hands with Jace and Craig and then go to the sofa. Ready?"

They all nodded.

Onstage, Jasyn was saying, "And now we've flown in some special guests, all the way from Oregon, to see the scary stuff as you see it and to tell us about it. Please welcome—Wendy Corduroy!"

Wendy strode out grinning, waved at the audience, and got a few appreciative whistles. She shook hands, moved to her designated spot, and Jasyn said, "Dipper Pines!"

Dipper tried to walk out just as confidently, but his gut was full of butterflies. He managed a smile and a wave, shook hands with both guys, and went and stood beside Wendy.

"Annnnnd a little lady I think you'll love, Dipper's sister Mabel Pines! Come on out, Mabel!"

Mabel bounded out, blew kisses, aimed both forefingers as if they were pistols at the audience, winked, and then took Jasyn's hand to shake it, but twirled so he was hugging her. "Wow! You're so impetuous!" she said, getting a laugh from Craig and the audience.

Then she stood beside Dipper. Craig said, "This is gonna be a fun show! Welcome, and please be seated."

Dipper politely waited for both girls to sit, then he sat, then he remembered to scoot well back.

"First tell us a little about yourselves," Craig said. "Wendy we met you in the Mystery Shack. How long have you worked there?'

"I've been there five years, Craig," Wendy said. "I started out as the sales clerk in the gift shop and worked my way up to manager."

Jasyn asked, "Is that your permanent job?"

She shook her head. "No, I'm a college student and after this next summer, I'll only be working in the summers."

"Going to major in ghost-busting?" Jasyn asked.

"No, forestry and environmental science," Wendy said.

"You're brainy and beautiful! I like it!" Craig told her.

Jasyn said, "And the guy sitting next to you is—?"

Wendy nudged him, and he said, "Hi, I'm Dipper Pines. I'm not originally from Gravity Falls, but my—our—Mabel's and my great-uncle Stanley Pines, you saw him on screen, is the co-owner of the Mystery Shack, and Mabel and I have spent every summer up there since 2012."

"We're twins!" Mabel put in helpfully. "Hi, I'm Mabel Pines, and I'm from Piedmont, California, just like my brother here, and like he said, we've spent lots of time in the Mystery Shack. In fact, we're the Mystery Twins!" She held out her hand and, with a little eye-roll, Dipper did the fist-bump.

Mabel finally settled down, and they watched the footage—the Mystery Shack at night, with night-vision cameras making Jasyn's and Craig's eyes light up an eerie bright green. Flickers of light in the underbrush—Wendy was touching his hand and thought to him, _Pfft. Just rabbits and possums, behind the plants. _Craig, however, earnestly told the audience, "We believe these are low-level Class D spirit manifestations, orbs as we call them."

The exhibits in the Museum were catalogued and explained. The Japanese dagger was exhibited and Wendy came on long enough to say, "The legend is that this is haunted by the ghost of a Samurai who was a monster hunter."

Then, as they were watching some exterior night shots, a distant howl came on the soundtrack.

The screen image froze, and Jasyn said, "You heard that? Once again." They replayed the howl. "That sort of weirded us out. Guys, any idea what animal that was?"

"Gray wolf," Wendy said promptly. "They were hunted almost to extinction in the 1940s, but a few survived. They're on the endangered list."

"Just a wolf?" Craig asked.

"Oh, yeah, way different from a coyote," Wendy said.

"You know," Mabel chimed in, "I've heard there are werewolves way off in the valley."

"Have you ever seen one?" Craig asked.

"Seen one? We fought off a pack of them!" Mabel said. "They were after this injured r—uh, deer. We held them off and they finally went away."

"Werewolves?" Craig asked. "Really?"

"Wolves, anyway," Dipper said, with a glance at Mabel.

Mabel shrugged. "Yeah, but, you know—you can't be sure!"

"Remember, wolves in Oregon are scarce and real shy of people," Wendy said. "People hunted down and killed almost all of them."

Wendy again spoke of encountering ghosts, and Dipper confirmed it. "Now, that was scary," Wendy said. "The ghosts sort of messed with everybody's mind, so it seemed like the whole place turned upside-down. Dipper—"

"What did he do?" Jasyn asked.

Wendy put her arm over his shoulders. "He grabbed a bat and started swatting them and the ghosts disappeared!"

"Ah, a class A physical apparition!" Craig said.

"Two-A, to be specific, Craig," Dipper said. "Both visual and aural manifestations."

"That means ghosts appeared and also made sounds," Jasyn explained. "Dipper, you watched our show before!"

"Big fan, Jasyn," Dipper said. This was getting easier.

Craig's turn: "Mabel, where were you while this was going on?"

"Umm—kinda unconscious. Almost like I was, um, drugged. I think the ghosts cast a spell on me. I was like in Hallucination Land and I didn't see much of them," she replied.

* * *

They took another break, all three of them went to the restrooms, and once they were away from stage, Dipper unplugged the microphone from the box clipped to his belt and whispered, "Guys! We can't give away how much about ghosts and stuff is real! It'd ruin the Valley if people started hunting down werewolves and stuff."

Mabel and Wendy unplugged their microphones. "Sorry," Mabel said. "I got excited."

"Remember," Dipper said, "the key to _Ghost Harassers_ is that they never quite find a real ghost. Keep it just, you know, a suggestion."

"Gotcha," Wendy said. "You on board, Mabel?"

"Yeah," she said, "Dip, if I mess up again, pinch me."

"I will," he said. "Hard."

* * *

The next half-hour consisted of shots from inside the Shack at night—Soos and his family moved to a motel for that one evening—and the video kept showing faint glows, while the audio caught creaks and something that might have been the wind moaning in the chimney or might, if you had a good imagination, have been the soft wail of a ghost.

In the attic, Craig and Jasyn asked questions and were answered by something rapping on wood. Dipper had the feeling that the something was a crew member. One rap for yes, two for no:

Both ghost hunters were breathing hard, as if on edge. Craig: "Is there a spirit here?"

_Knock._

"Are you an evil spirit?"

_Knock. . . . . . . . knock._

Jasyn: "Whoo, I was worried there!"

The spirit claimed that its death had come long ago, that it had unfinished business, and that it hung out in the attic. That was news to Dipper and Mabel, but Dipper could tell from her expression that Mabel had the same suspicion he did.

When the footage ended, Dipper and Mabel answered questions: No, they didn't feel scared about being in the attic. In fact, Dipper slept up there when they were in Gravity Falls. Yes, now and then they noticed strange things. "Dipper never unties his shoes before kicking them off," Mabel said. "But when he takes them off up there, in the morning they're always untied! And they keep coming untied all through the day!"

Almost before they knew it, their share of the taping was over. They hung out in the wings until Jasyn and Craig wrapped things up and the audience was on the way out. Then Deena herded them and Teek to the green room—the place where, they were told, they would wait tomorrow until they were onstage again.

"OK," Craig said, "that was good—especially you, Mabel—but tomorrow, pep it up, put more energy into your voices and expressions. We're gonna ask you to wear the same outfits—when you get to your hotel, change to casual clothes and ring the concierge and tell them you have a rush cleaning job, don't worry, it's on us—and the limo will pick you up tomorrow morning. Go ahead and have breakfast at the hotel, charge it all to the room, and we'll see you here tomorrow. Jace?"

"That's about it," Jasyn said. "Yeah, Wendy, I love your voice, but it's way laid-back. Can you sound more excited?"

"Sure can!" Wendy said. "Man, those ghosts showed up, and I was terrified!"

"Yeah, that's it!" Jasyn said. "Dipper, same thing for you. You kind of get, uh, is professorial a word? You sound sort of like a teacher sometimes. Sound more like a guy who's encountered the unknown, and you're awed by it! Think you can do that?"

"I'll take a shot at it," Dipper said. _Easy. I'll just think about Bill Cipher clutching me and Mabel and counting off EENY! MEENY! MINEY! YOU!_ _That should just about do it._

And the next day they remembered their coaching, they covered about the same ground, and everything went fine. Then as they waited for their tour of Hollywood, Wendy said, "How was it, Dip?"

He chuckled. "Well, they're nice guys and all, and it was interesting, but you know, when I was younger and watched the show faithfully, it seemed so great, so real. And now—well, they're more like Grunkle Stan than I thought!"

"Yeah," Mabel said. "If they saw a real ghost, I think they'd flip out."

"Anyway," Teek said, "I'm glad it's over. I have to say, I got jealous when Mabel was on stage and all the guys in the audience were laughing and whistling!"

"That's the idea, sweetie," Mabel said, kissing his cheek.

And then their ride showed up, they had a wonderful tour of the town, they had a snack at a restaurant where Mabel recognized a singing star and an actor, and they went to the Chinese Theater and tried standing in the footprints of stars.

It didn't seem that anything bad had happened.

Not just then.


	6. Chapter 6

**One More Spring**

**(May-June 2017)**

* * *

**6\. Finish Lines**

May flashed by in what seemed like a couple of days. It was longer, but it felt too fast. And the short time was crammed with events. At the State Track and Field Finals, Dipper was sure at the 150-meter mark that he'd come in second. He was too far behind the Corvalis runner to catch up, though ahead of the pack.

And then he heard—or imagined he heard—Wendy's voice: _Go, Dipper! I believe in you!_ That probably wasn't possible, because she was a long way off in the stands, but she was there and cheering him on. He leaned into the sprint, picking up his pace more than he believed he could.

He even thought _You in there, Bill? Little help?_

_You got it, Pine Tree. Go for it, I'll take care of your heart!_

Wendy and Bill urged him on, their voices probably all in his imagination. But somehow he closed the distance and in the last couple of meters he moved just far enough ahead—

When he slowed and stopped, the Corvalis guy, taller and lankier than he was, dripping with sweat, grinned and gasped, "Damn, man! Way to run. Congratulations."

And the guy on the loudspeaker said, "The two-hundred-meter results: Third place, Lewis, Junior, from Creighton High. Second place, Mathessen, Junior from Corvalis. First place, Pines, Senior from Piedmont High!"

"Good luck next year," Dipper puffed.

It was a good meet for Piedmont. They came in second in the State, and Dipper, Macavoy, Janet Thowley, and Diana Crown wound up as state varsity champions. Coach Dinson actually hugged Dipper when he came in from the track. And gave him permission to go watch the rest of the meet with Wendy and his family.

He went up to the stands to random congratulations, and then a laughing Wendy jumped up. "Don't hug me, I'm sweaty!" he warned.

"Like I care!" she said. Then she demonstrated that, in fact, she did not. They not only hugged, but kissed.

Mabel was grinning. "Way to go, Broman! Way to go!"

* * *

Mabel got a special-delivery letter from Olmsted: She had been granted the Louise Vickery Scholarship in Visual Arts, a financial windfall that wouldn't pay for her whole college experience but would definitely come in useful. By then Wendy had gone back to Gravity Falls, but Dipper face-timed her in the middle of work with the news. She flashed a huge smile and told Mabel, "I always knew you were talented, Mabes!"

Also, the prints of Mabel's painting, "Where the Dreams Are Real," came in from the printer. Mabel was super-critical of them—the colors were a tad muted, she said—but they looked great, Dipper thought, printed on a thick canvas-textured paper. Mabel immediately sat down at the dining-room table and autographed a hundred of them down in the right-hand margin: _Mabel Pines, 1/100, Mabel Pines, 2/100, _and so on. And they had to make a special trip to the copier store to find a box just the right size for the reproductions. "These," Mabel said, "are going straight onto the Mystery Shack shelves."

Then two weeks before graduation, she and Dipper learned something that Mr. and Mrs. Pines already knew. "What does 'salutatorian' mean?" Mabel asked Dipper when the letter came from the school.

"It means you and I tied for second-place in our GPAs," Dipper said. "Maida Bromfeld is going to be the Valedictorian—I always knew she would, she has like a perfect 100 average. But you and I are close behind her, and so we're co-Salutatorians. We get to give the welcoming speech at graduation."

"I'll sing a song from _My Fair Lady!_" Mabel said.

"Not enough time for that," Dipper said. "We're asked to limit our speech to 12-15 minutes. And it's not a performance, it's just a 'Parents, fellow students, faculty and staff members, welcome to the 2017 Piedmont High graduation.' Maida will give the long valedictory address."

"OK," Mabel said. "I like Maida and all, but what the heck does 'valedictorian' mean?"

"Comes from Latin and it means 'the person who says farewell.' See, we greet everybody and Maida says goodbye at the end, just before we walk across the stage for our diplomas."

"I get to go first!"

"Of course you do," Dipper said.

"Yeah, ladies first."

"Not exactly. Alphabetically, Mabel Pines comes right before Mason Pines."

"As it should," Mabel said with a smirk.

* * *

They could have exempted almost all their finals that year—what did they matter? Their final averages had already been computed. In fact, Mabel took all of her art finals, and Dipper—well, he took every one of his. Because he was that dedicated, he said. Mabel asked, "Oh, is that how you spell 'anal retentive?'"

"Not at the breakfast table!" Wanda Pines said sternly.

Grunkle Ford, Grunkle Stan, their wives, and Wendy all came down for the ceremony. The school gymnasium was traditionally the site of graduation, but renovations were beginning, so it was moved to a nearby arena that more usually featured music acts. In their caps and gowns, Mabel and Dipper waited until they were introduced, then went together up to the microphone.

Dipper had told Mabel to go first. She smiled and said, "It's taken a long time to get here! But here we are. We'd like to welcome everyone—parents and relatives, special others, faculty and staff, and especially our fellow students. And we have just a few words to say."

Dipper leaned forward. "High school has its ups and downs, as all of us know now. But they tell me we'll look back on our high school years fondly. Congratulations on making it this far, and we wish you the best of luck in your coming years. Mabel and I talked this over, and here's what we'd advise. Think of this place as a huge room. Every wall has many doors."

"Infinite doors!" Mabel said. "And no two are alike. Some doors open up to the path to college. Others lead to serving in the armed forces. Some lead to heartache, and some lead to joy. You never know."

Dipper again: "But as our great-uncle Stanley Pines once told us, 'When you come to a door, open it!'"

Mabel: "Or if it's locked, find a convenient adjoining wall and bash it in!"

From the crowd, a gravelly voice: "You tell 'em, Sweetie!"

Dipper: "But once you're through a door, you can't go back. You just look for more doors to explore. Our other great-uncle, Stanford Pines, told us, 'The joy is in exploring. Never be afraid to open a door.'"

Mabel: "So we wish for you, the Class of 2017, a lifetime of many doors and many, oh so many, pleasant arrivals."

Together: "Congratulations to each and every one of you."

Applause.

* * *

After graduation, when they got home, a boxy, shiny black SUV stood in the driveway. Dad turned around and handed Dipper a set of keys. "Son, go move your car so I can pull into our garage."

"My car?" Dipper asked.

"It's two years old, but in top shape," Alex Pines said.

"A Land Runner?" Dipper asked.

"Wendy recommended it," Alex said. "Mabel—Helen Wheels is all yours if you want it. But if you want to trade up—"

"Never!" Mabel said. "We were meant for each other! Woohoo! Hey, Dip, I get the first drive in your new car!"

"We'll see about that," Dipper said.

* * *

And so on June 2, Wendy and Dipper climbed into his new compact off-road vehicle, Mabel and Grunkle Stan into Helen Wheels. Sheila, Lorena, and Stanford Pines were flying back—Alex would drive them to the airport in a few minutes, and they'd get home way before the kids could drive up.

The twins had said their goodbyes. They had looked ahead to the things they had to do in August to be ready for beginning college right after Labor Day. Wendy and Dipper had invited Mom and Dad to the twins' eighteenth birthday party—and to the quiet civil wedding they planned. Mom wept a good deal, but she said, "Well—you're awfully young, but I hope you're very happy."

They would return to Gravity Falls later for a church ceremony and renewal of vows. They had wanted to do that in September, but college was complicating things—Olmsted and Western Alliance were on different schedules—so they were shooting for a date when Christmas break started instead.

"When are you going to fit in a honeymoon?" Dad asked.

Wendy said, "Honeymoon's gonna be college orientation, looks like! But we'll get away maybe between Christmas and New Year's."

"My children are so grown-up," Wanda said.

That morning they hugged, said their goodbyes, and started the cars. Just three doors down the street, little Billy Sheaffer stood waving. Dipper stopped the car and rolled down the window. "Hey, Billy," he said, "you gonna come up and visit again?"

"Can I?" he asked eagerly.

"Sure," Dipper said. "There's still lots of things to see in Gravity Falls. Mabel and I will show you all of them. Lots of things to learn."

"Yeah, thanks!" Billy said. "Oof!"

Mabel had stopped Helen Wheels right behind Dipper's car and had climbed out to rush over and hug Billy. "Hey, Billy," she said, "Do us a big favor. Drop in on Mom and Dad. Kinda keep an eye on them. They're feeling lonely. Will you promise me that?"

"S-sure," he said, grinning. "Yeah. Every day!"

"You're the best," Mabel told him.

"Well—I'll try to be," Billy replied.

He and Dipper exchanged a fist-bump.

And then the two cars rolled away into a bright Friday morning, heading for I-5 and north, back to Oregon, and back to Gravity Falls and whatever lay ahead.

* * *

The End


End file.
